Your Interactions as a Customer Can Guide You as a Seller

I love to be a customer, or try to be a customer sometimes. Today I went into a high-end specialty foods store in my city, planning to buy a small side salad.

As I walked through the front doorway, a huge sign to my right let me know about a great special full lunch today. I decided to upgrade, and ordered it. To my amazement, I was told that I needed a coupon. Hmmm… didn’t say that on the HUGE sign I just passed.

So I mentioned that, and the woman waiting on me went into the back to further investigate whether I could have this special or not. She came out, sighed, and said she could in fact offer it to me – yippee, I thought – as a regualar customer (who never did see a coupon in my mailbox or other newspaper) I could actually get a special here today.

I felt that from that point on, the woman treated me as if I was lucky, and that I was getting away with something – sort of pulling the wool over them – and it didn’t feel good.

The salad turned out to not taste as good, either. I won’t rush back in. All because of a sign they created which caused me to upgrade my order within the confines of their store.

The lesson here for me as a seller, and anyone running a product or services business, is to treat people as if you are really glad to have their business. Face confusing communications head on, and don’t let the customer bear the brunt of it. I don’t need to go to this retail business, but they do need people like me to shop there.